Warts and All
by hufflelit
Summary: Two conversations between Veronica and Logan, nine years apart. Spoilers for the movie.


**A/N:** I wrote this after seeing the movie, then manically binge re-watching the series. Season 3 was so hard on Veronica and Logan that I couldn't help trying to give them a little bit more closure. I hope you enjoy.

* * *

1.

The elevator tried to close twice before Veronica could force herself onto the plush carpet of the Neptune Grand's penthouse floor.

She'd lost count of how many times she'd been here. She'd even lost count of how many times she'd been here and wished she wasn't. Had the hallway ever felt this long?

She stood in front of his door for a long time, clenching and unclenching her fist.

She could just call him. She could even leave without saying anything at all. She'd already told him he was out of her life. Vanishing was what shat she did. He knew that about her.

He knew it, and he'd asked her to change. Asked her to give him some warning before she disappeared. So here she was. Warning him.

She knocked.

Footsteps approached the door, and Veronica had a cowardly moment to hope it would be Dick telling her Logan wasn't here, but if she wanted to get freaky, he had a tripod and was willing to slum it.

It was Logan. He was wearing wrinkled shorts and a thermal, and he looked so gorgeous it made her want to throw up.

His face brightened painfully. Veronica's heart somehow managed to ache and plummet at the same time. She should have just called.

"Veronica," he said, surprised. The ghost of a split lip lingered in the way he only smiled with the right side of his mouth. "Come in!"

She glanced past him into the messy suite where they'd spent so many weekends curled up in bed, watching movies and eating room service, kissing and making love until she couldn't tell where her body ended and his began. From here, she could see the edge of the balcony where they'd spent one summer night building a fort out of pillows and blankets and Logan's goofy enthusiasm.

She was doing the right thing. She told herself that as she watched his face start to fall.

"I can't stay. I just came to say goodbye."

Logan leaned on the door, bracing his shoulder against the edge.

"You going somewhere?"

"Virginia. I got an internship with the FBI."

The right side of his mouth pulled up again.

"I heard. That's awesome, Mars. Really."

Right. "Mars." His new, totally platonic nickname for her. _I tried calling you Chuckles, but it didn't stick._

"And in the fall, I'm transferring to Stanford."

She watched his expression change from surprise to confusion, finally settling on that kicked-puppy desolation she'd come to hate so much.

"Well… can I call you?" he asked. The tightness in his voice told her he already knew the answer.

"I'd rather you didn't."

He was bracing himself against the door again, his hands twisting the handle, his temple pressed against the dark wood.

"I don't get it, Veronica." His voice wavered, and Veronica gritted her teeth against the reflexive tears that sprang to her eyes. "I mean, what more do you want me to do? How much sorrier can I be? If I could take back sleeping with Madison–"

"This isn't about that," Veronica interrupted. She crossed her arms to keep from covering her ears like a child. _La la la, I'm not listening!_ "This is about me. I need to leave Neptune and everything in it."

It was true. It was what Dad had said, after he won the election by a hair and they'd finally had to talk about what the hell she'd been doing breaking into Jake Kane's mansion to steal his priceless hard drive. Dad was facing obstruction charges from the county prosecutor, and he deserved to know why. He'd been surprisingly calm about the sex tape, but he had been firm.

"Veronica, the harder you fight, the faster this town will drag you into the muck," he'd said as she searched his eyes for disappointment or anger: the things she deserved. "With a government salary, I can get a loan to pay for Stanford. You earned it, sweetheart. You've earned a ticket out of here."

She'd put up a weak argument about not wanting to leave him alone or go to school without her friends, but her heart wasn't in it. In the Fitzpatricks, in Gory Sorokin, and now in the county prosecutor, she'd found adversaries she couldn't outsmart with rapier wit or well-placed blackmail. The fact that she hadn't recognized the difference scared her more than she liked to admit. The fact that she'd hurt her father just plain terrified her.

"So you're breaking up with Piz?" Logan asked now, wearing the tight smile that meant he was about to be an ass.

Veronica gritted her teeth and didn't answer.

Logan's smirk widened, his eyes glittering with the anger that had been missing from her dad's. Somehow, seeing anger in Logan's eyes didn't make her feel guilty. It made her furious.

"No?" he taunted. "What about Wallace and Mac – you ditching them? Are you disowning your father? Or do those people get to stay in the picture?"

"Those people didn't hurt me like you did," she managed, blaming her shaky voice on rage.

"Oh my god, Veronica!" Logan exploded. He jerked away from the door – threw up his hands like he wanted to shake her – knotted them in his own hair instead. "If I'd known that fucking Madison would make you hate me so much, I never would've done it!"

"Yeah, well, you did."

The words hung between them, along with everything they implied.

_I hate you._

Was it true? She wasn't sure. Did it matter? Only if she didn't take them back.

"The other day," Logan muttered before she could make up her mind, "in the cafeteria, you said you just needed time. What changed?"

Veronica shrugged. She tried to make it look careless, but her whole body felt brittle and stiff.

"I had some time to think about it," she said. That was true. She'd had time to think, and she'd realized that Logan Echolls was the only person in her life who scared her more than she scared herself. No one else could make her so unhinged.

"We're not good for each other, Logan," she said as gently as she could. "We've tried being friends. We've tried avoiding each other. The only thing we seem really good at is hurting each other."

Logan's forehead was pressed against the door again, his face soft and vulnerable. In this light, his eyes looked almost black.

"Don't I get a say in this?" he whispered. His voice was thick and his eyelashes sparkled with tears. It made Veronica want to hold him and scream at him and punch him and fuck him and cry with him, and it wasn't supposed to feel like this – not at 18. Maybe not ever.

"No," she said, the tightness in her throat strangling her voice. "This is what I need."

He watched her for a moment, doing that thing where he locked his lower jaw, popping it down and then back up. She'd pointed it out to him once and he hadn't known what she was talking about. It was an unconscious thing he did when he'd been grinding his teeth. He'd asked her to tell him when he did it, so she had, until he'd almost stopped doing it at all. Now she felt a crazy urge to say, "You're doing it! That jaw thing!" She bit her lips to stop the sob that bubbled up in her throat.

"Well, by all means, take what you need and go, Veronica," Logan said with a bitter laugh. "You always do."

She was about to say something – _sorry, I love you, I'm sorry_ – anything, but then he smirked that awful, psychotic jackass smirk and the words evaporated in her mouth.

"Hey, have a _great_ life, Ronnie," Logan said with jaunty, brutal sarcasm, and shut the door in her face.

* * *

2.

Veronica's fingers traced lazy, soothing patterns along his bicep. He could feel her breath on the sensitive skin of his lips, and the stronger, cooler breeze of the ocean against his bare shoulders. Beyond the open window, moonlit waves crashed on the beach. It was fair to say that Logan Echolls was happier than he'd been in years.

Still, there was this niggling anxiety in the back of his mind. It had taken him a few days to figure out what it was – to separate it from the pain of Carrie's murder and the hell of being accused of it – and when he had, he'd almost laughed.

As mind-blowing as sex with Veronica had always been – and it was, if possible, even better than he'd remembered – physical intimacy generally put her in the mood for the emotional kind. Nine years apart, and he was still conditioned like a dog with a bell: have great sex; get interrogated. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Since she'd blown back into town on her white horse of sleuthery and sass, he'd had several opportunities to wonder if she'd changed. Thus far, all post-coital canoodling had been blissfully free of emotional minefields. They'd mostly just complimented each other's form, snickering like high schoolers, and, just before falling asleep, whispered how glad they were to have each other back. Maybe it was time to admit that even Veronica Mars could change her spots.

"Logan?"

But then, he'd always been an idiot.

He managed not to flinch, but it was damned close. If he didn't move, maybe she'd think he was asleep.

"Logan?" she whispered again, a little louder.

The fingers on his bicep became a hand on his face, stroking the bristles along his jaw. He leaned into her touch automatically, and then kicked himself. He could practically hear her smiling. God, he was easy.

"Mmm," he groaned, trying to convey, "I'm sleeping" and also "please shut up, Veronica" without opening his eyes.

Then she started kissing him, and his response to that was pretty automatic, too.

When she was sure she had his attention, she pulled away. Logan gave a half-hearted moan of protest, but they both knew she'd won. She always did. Some things never changed.

Maybe it wouldn't be as bad now, he thought. They'd been apart for so long, the things they'd done in the meantime couldn't really hurt each other, could they? Anyway, he was pretty happy with the guy he was now. He'd cleaned up; found direction and a purpose. He actually liked himself well enough to stand being on his own. It wasn't like when they were teenagers, and he'd watched Veronica out of the corners of his eyes, half-terrified that she'd look too hard at him and see straight through to the rotten thing underneath.

"I need to tell you something," Veronica said, pushing her pillow down so she could see him with both eyes.

Logan threaded his fingers into her hair – thinner in the last nine years, but no less blonde – and smiled.

"Shoot."

Veronica bit her lips and lowered her eyes, and she was so entirely the girl he'd known that he found himself grinning.

"Come on, Ronnie, spit it out," he teased, tweaking her earlobe.

Veronica looked up with a smile that didn't quite touch her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Logan's fingers froze as his mind flipped through the worst things that could follow an apology. _I'm going back to New York_, maybe, or, _I'm getting back together with Piz. This has been fun, but…_

"For what?" he rasped. He forced himself to keep stroking her hair like he wasn't freaking out.

_Please say VD, please say VD…_

"For the way I left things," Veronica murmured. She took his hand, ghosting her nails up and down the inside of his wrist. "For the way I left _you_."

It was hard to put a number on how many times he'd had this exact fantasy. Veronica. Naked. Apologizing. It was probably the kind of number that stopped being a number, and was instead just termed "unhealthy."

"I told you," he said weakly. "Bygones."

"Not this time," she said, shaking her head so that her nose pressed into the pillow. "You always forgave me too easily, Logan. Let me get myself off the hook this time."

"Okay."

She rolled onto her back, and his hand slid out of her hair to fall uselessly on the pillow.

"I let you think that I left because of you. Because I couldn't forgive you for sleeping with with Madison while we were broken up." She rolled her eyes, but he didn't miss the bitter turn of her mouth that showed it still hurt.

"And, okay, maybe I couldn't get over it then. I'd been fighting a war since Lilly died. And even after… we found out what happened," she glanced over to make sure he was okay, "I forgot how to stop fighting. I carried that war inside me because to call a truce meant… to forgive. To say that what happened was okay. And it's not. It will never be okay. But I could have made it easier. On all of us."

"You know, I was pretty pissed off back then too," he offered.

Veronica's forehead creased, the look that meant she was doing something she hated. Logan recognized it from past apologies, few and far between.

"Do you remember when you told me you loved me, and that we should go easy on each other?" she asked.

"Vaguely," he lied. The truth was, he remembered everything: every conversation, every kiss, and every fight. He'd drunk away a lot of memories in his misspent youth, but he seemed to have a steel-trap recall for all things Veronica.

"I couldn't figure out how to do that," she said. "And it's not that I didn't want to – I could actually _see_ myself hurting you, and hurting other people, and it was like I couldn't stop. I thought that finding the truth was the most important thing – the only thing that mattered. I was wrong. The only thing you ever asked me to do was trust you, and I couldn't figure out how. But it wasn't because you didn't deserve it."

She wrapped her arms around her middle, hugging his striped duvet against her body.

"So, it turns out I have trust issues," she announced in her wry, Veronica way.

Logan smirked. "There's that psychology degree, paying for itself."

Veronica laughed and rolled her eyes. "Yeah. That was an uncomfortable three years looking in the mirror."

She bit her lips, working them between her teeth. Logan was quiet, giving her space to get whatever she needed off her chest. He'd spent so long being angry at her, so long telling himself he hated her, so long missing her so much he thought he'd die. He'd been getting over her for a long time, and now it felt like all the old wounds were opening back up. Part of him wanted to cut and run before they ended up hurting each other again. But a bigger part wanted her to keep digging, keep talking until the wounds were open and all the poison had been let out.

"There's something… I've wanted to say to you," she finally said, looking down. "For a long time now. I'd start to text you and then stop, put it in a letter or an email, but… eventually I waited too long and it seemed so stupid to send one sentence out into the void, when I didn't think we'd ever see each other again."

"Tell me," he whispered.

Veronica looked at him for a long moment, then closed her eyes. When she spoke, he could feel her reciting it from memory, worn into grooves in her mind.

"I know I could be suspicious and judgmental and disappointed, but nothing you did ever changed how much I loved you."

Logan closed his eyes so she couldn't see the look in them. How many times had he wished to hear that? Everyone left: Carrie, Mom, Lilly – even Dad and Trina, the professional leavers. All because they didn't love him enough. How much would it have meant to hear Veronica say that before she went?

He opened his eyes and found her watching him, her lips between her teeth, something like fear in her eyes.

"Well," he said, forcing a smile, "that would have stopped Nineteen-Year-Old Logan from drinking for about an hour." Veronica's eyebrows lifted and Logan's smile got a little easier. "Honestly, Veronica, I don't know what you've been telling yourself for the past nine years, but you leaving wasn't what screwed me up. I was kind of a mess before that."

"I know. But I'm sorry I couldn't stay to help you."

"It wasn't your mess to clean up."

Veronica huffed a sigh.

"Logan, _I'm sorry_."

He hesitated. "Thank you."

It felt like it should be momentous: Veronica apologizing; him accepting it. He'd been waiting for so long, it felt like those words should blow him apart and put him back together, a new man. He snorted. It should be _epic_. But instead it was just… nice. Not the end of the world, but good to hear her say. Was this that thing they called closure?

"Gotta say, I prefer this to your usual form of pillow talk," he said. Veronica gave a puzzled frown. "Twenty Questions," he elaborated.

She laughed – a startled, strangled sound that she muffled in her pillow.

"Right," she cringed. "So… have you ever been with a hooker?"

Logan grinned. "Still no." He was glad to see she didn't look surprised this time.

"Your turn," she said.

He gave her an exasperated look, but then he realized that he did have a question. He used to think he knew everything about her, but now he was missing nine crucial years of Veronica trivia, and he wanted to know _everything_. Was this what it felt like to be Veronica Mars?

"How long were you and Piz together?" he asked, bracing for her reaction.

Veronica didn't even bat an eye. She never had, even on the rare occasions he'd asked her things that would have made him crazy, had she been the one asking. _Did you ever cheat on me with Piz? Was Duncan good in the sack?_ God, he'd been such a prick.

"Nine months," she said. "We tried the long distance thing the summer after freshman year, but it didn't work. Exchanged a few emails every year or so after that. He looked me up when he moved to New York last fall."

The next question followed before he could stop it.

"Do you love him?"

If he didn't know her so well, he probably would have missed the flinch.

"It's my turn."

"I seem to remember giving you all my turns once upon a time."

Veronica narrowed her eyes. "Fine."

"So, do you?"

Her lips twisted into a soft, sad smile.

"Not enough."

It went on like that, from the light questions ("What made you join the navy?" "Did you ever Google me?") to the heavy ("What was your lowest point in the last nine years?" "Did you ever hate me?"). They dug into their past, shared and separate, laughing at inside jokes and new ones, opening old wounds and sealing them with kisses. The sky started to brighten, turning everything a pale gray, and they kept right on talking as color seeped back into the world.

By the time their words ran out, the sun had cleared the horizon. Logan felt worn out and empty. It was a surprisingly good feeling.

Veronica's eyes were closed, her bare shoulder peeking out from under the sheets. They both needed sleep badly, but Logan had one more question.

"Do you still love me?"

She didn't move for a second, and he wondered if she'd already fallen asleep. Then a smile started on her lips, slow and bright as sunrise on the ocean. Her eyes drifted open and he knew the answer.

She said it anyway.

"Always."


End file.
